Monthly Archives: February 2013

Nestor was a character in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Throughout both books he was simultaneously praised and scorned for his hospitality and counseling, but overall was viewed as a good and wise counselor, irregardless of the success of those that followed his advice. Too often, nowadays, it seems that we are too focused on immediate results. Even when following sound advice, we lack the patience to see things through when this advice does not bear immediate fruit.

Imagine, then, a dark evening just after a rain shower. We require light. Instead of viewing sound advice as a light switch to be flipped on to produce immediate results, we should look at it as a match being struck and set to a candle wick. A breeze may unexpectedly come along and extinguish the match before we can light the candle, or even an errant leftover raindrop may splash upon our match, but that does not mean the striking of the match was ill-advised.

Here then is the Starfleet Nestor-class, for whom I’ve concocted a storyline as being the first Starfleet ship to feature ship’s counselors as part of the regular crew complement. May their advice bear fruit (in time)!

Over the last month I have really gotten into playing the board game, Star Trek: Fleet Captains, especially with the introduction of the Romulan expansion. For those of you that are into board games and into Star Trek, this game truly captures the feelof Star Trek more than any other game I’ve played.

My wife and I love playing board games, it’s a wonderful way to spend time with one another as well as to indulge a bit of our creativity and problem-solving abilities. With Star Trek she always plays the Federation and (up until the Romulan expansion), I’ve always played the Klingons. The Federation, for those not in the know, is a peaceful organization dedicated to scientific and social progress, while the Klingons are an aggressive warrior species bent on galactic conquest.

I have discovered that in trying to play the Klingons as written in Trek lore, aggressive and expansionistic, I invariably lose 3/4 of the time against my pacifistic, science-focused Federation-playing wife. I’ve found that more often than not, when I do win at the board game, it’s usually because I have undertaken missions that do not rely on combat for success, but instead involve non-violent methods. That is why this board game successfully captures the feel of Trek; it shows us that violent conflict is not the best route to victory, and that’s a lesson that would do our world so much good if we all took that a bit more to heart when we interact with the people we share it with.

So below I have created some additional ships for the board game, enjoy!